Real talk

Important questions to ask when choosing your financial advisor

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Asking the right questions can help you find an advisor who will give you the right advice. Be thorough. Your legacy depends on it.

About the advisor

  • Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this industry?
  • What makes you qualified to be a financial advisor?
  • Do you have other clients who are like me in terms of profession, age and
    income?
  • Do you have any formal customer complaints against you?
  • Why did you choose to work at your firm?
  • Is the firm considered a broker-dealer, wirehouse or registered investment advisor (RIA), and what does that mean to me?

Approach

  • What services do you provide to your clients?
  • How will you help set me up for financial success?
  • What would be your approach to managing my money?
  • Do you have a legal responsibility to act in my best interest?

Investment decisions

  • How would you select your investments for me?
  • Do you make more money by investing in UBS products or with products from other companies?
  • Do you invest in the same thing for all of your clients?
  • Can you explain what sustainable investing is and if it’s something that I should be thinking about?

Assessing performance

  • How will you judge if my investments are performing well?
  • What will you do if my investments are not performing well?
  • Do you show me how much money I made before or after fees are taken out?

Communication

  • When I have a question, who will I reach out to and how quickly will they respond to me?
  • How often do you reach out to clients? By phone? E-mail?
  • How often will we review my accounts?
  • Can I login online and look at all of my accounts in one place?

Team

  • Who on your team has access to my accounts and why?
  • What are the responsibilities of each person on your team?

Fees

  • What are all of the ways that you get paid?
  • What are your management fees?
  • Do you get paid by anyone other than your clients?

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